The Ancient Kalkadoon Miners

The Kalkadoon people have been extracting hard black rocks and making spearheads and axes from the hills of Mt.Isa for thousands of years in Australia.

The spearheads and axes were not only used for themselves, the Kalkadoon people had extensive trade systems that went for hundreds of kilometres around kalkadoon territory. The Kalkadoons were extremely territorial and would rarely leave their country, they protected their mines ferociously and were known to surrounding tribes as fearsome warriors. They would tell neighbouring tribes by way of a message stick of a market that would be held in Kalkadoon territory to barter and trade their prized axe and spearheads. The hard black basalt weapons were easy to shape by the miners but very, very strong when chopping and Kalkadoon axes from Mt.Isa have been found as far away as Southern and Western Australia.

The Kalkadoon people had a production line factory system in place where each group of people specialised in a certain area of the operation. The miners would lever large basalt rocks out of the ground using long wooden poles, the rock was then broken into smaller pieces by another group. The rocks were then moved to another place where they were shaped into spear and axe heads before they went to the final group who were women who sharpened the weapons ready for use. The same job specialties apply to the miners of today with each miner specialising in their own field.

In my painting the middle are the Kalkadoon miners working on their mine and spearheads with the handprints representing the many different hands that make the mine work. The grinding stone, spearheads and axes represent kalkadoon technology with the boomerang, shield and red ochre representing the goods that were traded for. The emu foot represents Kalkadoon country.

Kalkadoon history and tradition is as old as time itself with the art of mining being practised for thousands of years.